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So, speaking of all these throwback digital trading cards I’ve been working on, I totally forgot that I was interviewed last October by Ryan Cracknell of Non-Sport Update Magazine (and his site Trader Cracks)! Just got my hands on a copy of the issue, the Feb-Mar 2015 edition, Volume 26, Number 1.

The interview mainly deals with the set of The Monster Squad cards I made last Halloween, but it also touches on my non-sport card collecting during the 80s as well. Here’s a picture of the article if anyone’s interested in reading it…

First off, Happy Halloween folks! This past month has been an absolute blast for me. Not only did I get a chance to talk (a lot) about my favorite movie of all time, but it’s been super rewarding for me on a personal level. Whether it’s been through doing research for the articles, sharing them or the reactions I had some amazing experiences over the past 45 days. Getting to chat with some awesome die-hard fans, sharing some stuff from my collection that a lot of people hadn’t seen before, or connecting with a bunch of the people who worked on the film (including director/writer Fred Dekker, stars Andre Gower, Michael Faustino & Ashley Bank, and amazing artists Craig Nelson and Steve Wang.) It makes my head spin!

Seriously, this has been the October to top all others in my book. I also had an absolute blast making the set of Topps-style trading cards and sharing those all month. My initial idea when I set out was to make the set of cards and have that be my primary content for the month along with writing about a week’s worth of articles that I would pepper here and there. As I started writing the articles though I found more and more things that I wanted to discuss until it got to a point where my to-write list was becoming longer than the days available in October to share them! Then my good friend and co-host on the Cult Film Club podcast, Paxton Holley, sent me a rad piece of MS fan art that completely summed up what I really wanted to do…

Do you remember back in the 80s before DVD special features, back before there were bootlegs at conventions with special rare director’s cuts of film, when the only way to get the inside dirt on your favorite flicks was via Official Souvenir Magazines?!? I used to love these things and had them for films like Batman, Back to the Future, Gremlins, Karate Kid I & II, and The Explorers. These magazines were a treasure trove of trivia, behind the scenes photos, and promotional art (like these two articles I wrote about The Goonies magazine.) Well, The Monster Squad never had one of these, and even though there has been a cult following of fans over the years that have been singing the praises of the film and writing short pieces online, there was no good place to collect all this awesome information. So when Pax sent me that rad cover above it really hit me that I was really trying to create a digital version of just that. Whether I was successful or not, eh, who knows, but I had a blast trying and knocked a bunch of stuff off the bucket list in the process of creating this content.

So thanks for reading, coming by to scope out the cards, or comment on any of these articles! If you like what you read here and want to do something that I think would be fun, do me a favor and go Like Fred Dekker’s facebook page (he was super freaking awesome and shared a bunch of my posts this month which kinda blew my mind – see the Beetlejuice gif above for my reaction), follow Andre Gower (a really swell guy who was also super gracious to retweet and respond my my silly posts), Ashley Bank, and Ryan Lambert on twitter and let them know Branded sent ya.

And last but by no means least, today I have the final two Monster Squad trading cards. Here’s the second to last card #33, Van Helsing Stakes Dracula!

Today is mostly going to be a huge picture dump because I think most of these behind the scenes images speak for themselves. But I also wanted to take a moment and point to the blog and videos of one of the Monster Squad crew members (who was working with Stan Winston at the time), Mr. Shannon Shea, who has been doing as much if not more than others when it comes to keeping the flame of the movie alive. Shea worked as an assistant special effects artist to a lot of the other folks on the crew (though he mainly assisted John Rosengrant on the Wolfman, specifically the hands and feet), and he ended up with some amazing behind the scenes footage from the Winston creature shop that I’m surprised hasn’t gotten more attention on youtube. There are two videos he’s posted so far, one that is a edit of a bunch of the different Monster projects that were going on in the studio and a second that’s a test of the radio remote controlled Wolfman limbs that’s pretty fun. Both videos have a ton of great stuff hidden in them for fans of the movie. So go check out Shannon’s site and his youtube channel as well where he also has behind the scenes videos of him working on other films like Evil Dead 2!!!

This first video is about 12 minutes long and is chock full of rad stuff including the artists at work, concept sketches and some fun trivia…

Here’s the Wolfman limb tests. I love that they went in this direction for that scene, mainly because I kind of want a radio remote controlled Wolfman arm to play with in my cul-de-sac…

And here are all of the behind the scenes images I’ve collected over the years, as well as a couple screen-graps of neat stuff from the videos above. In the second row, second to the last there is a picture of two of the sculpted Wolfman forearms and hands. These look awesome, but were unfortunately ditched because they were made in the wrong scale.

There are conflicting dates recorded for when The Monster Squad had it’s official movie premiere party, at least if you go by the dates associated with celebrity sitings at the event (I’ve seen June 3rd and August 11th, 1987 as potential dates.) But I do know that it was held at the Hard Rock in Hollywood and there was an interesting mix of A-B list celebrities that came out for the flick. Though normally I wouldn’t find this terribly interesting, it’s kind of neat that the production brought out actors to portray the monsters in costume for the event and I believe they ended up using the Stan Winston suits and appliances for at least the Gillman, Wolfman, and Mummy, and I think Frankenstein’s Monster as well.

So, who showed up for the event? Michael Douglas for one…

Also, Arnold-freaking-Schwarzenegger!

I’m not sure but based on these two photos it looks like there were either a couple of different stand-ins for Duncan Regehr playing the part of Dracula (both of which look like Joe Flaherty’s Count Floyd from SCTV)…

…it’s either that or maybe there were two premiere parties for the movie. One of my favorite celebrity sitings at the party is none other than Kiefer Sutherland who was hot off the release of The Lost Boys. I love the idea of him hitting up other horror flicks at the time, specifically this film…

“Look out David, there’s a Wolfman behind you!”

Now I kinda want to see a battle between the Lost Boys vampires and the monsters from the Monster Squad, but I am way too old to be writing fanfic. I’ll just leave that one in my head…

This next set of pictures I have features Michelle Phillips from the band The Mamas & The Papas who had a run in with the Gillman, which make for some really neat photos. The keen observer will notice Jason Hervey (EJ in the film) in the background too!

Next, here’s a picture of Andre Gower attending the premiere in his rad Stephen King shirt and Crew jacket…

I also have this super rad clipping from the August 1987 issue of Teen Set magazine featuring Gower, Drew Barrymore, Kirk Cameron, Jason Lively (from Night of the Creeps), and director Fred Dekker!

Lastly, here’s another picture of Fred Dekker (with his family), which is one of the few shots of him I was able to find from the time in and around the making of The Monster Squad…

So, based on Dekker’s outfits being different in the two photos I think this points to the fact that there were at least two premiere screenings events for the flick.

Other guests that attended that night included Billy Crystal, Meatloaf, and Regis Philbn and family. Unfortunately there are no photos of them being accosted by monsters (damn!) Star Studded indeed…

For this last part of the Monster Squad art showcase I wanted to share a few pieces of art. First up is this weird piece by Garbage Pail Kids artist Brent Engstrom who literally envisions a monster mash-up!

And finally, probably the most well known piece of Monster Squad fan art, the poster illustrated by Tyler Stout for Mondo…

Let’s scope out today’s card…

Since there was never any MS merchandise produced, specifically a Topps trading card set, I thought it would be fun to make a mini set of 80s-style digital trading cards for my favorite movie of all time. So come back each evening for Trick or Treats and collect them all!

For part 7 of the Monster Squad art showcase I thought it would be fun to share a couple of awesome poster illustrations. This first is by Justin Erickson of Phantom City Creative for the Twitch Film Back to the 80s screening awhile back. I totally need a copy of this for Branded HQ…

Next up is that rad minimalist piece by Victor Santos for Camp Amento Krypton…

Though the theatrical release of The Monster Squad was an unfortunate failure (grossing around $3.8M against a estimated $12M budget in its two week big screen run), looking back I’m surprised that there wasn’t even a miniscule attempt to merchandise the film. Most of those decisions and all of that work typically comes in the year leading up to a movie’s release, and seeing how this was made at the apex of 80s era merch and branding when even films specifically aimed at adult (Robocop, Rambo II, and The Toxic Avenger) were getting toy lines, branded school supplies and lunchboxes. In my eyes The Monster Squad is a licensing goldmine. I mean there are great creatures to make action figures out of, there are a ton of catch phrases worthy of t-shirts, and they had a deal in place with both Burger King and Adidas, I mean come on, where are my BK Collector Glasses featuring the monsters or my navy blue satin Adidas jackets emblazoned with the Monster Squad logo?!? Speaking of Adidas, I love this Monster Squad tie-in poster that was used in shoe stores back in 1987. I wish I could get a better scan of it, but alas, this is not in my personal collection (I saw in on ebay years ago and stupidly passed on bidding…) I would kill to have this on my wall now…

Anyway, getting back to the point, in the years since the movie came out and the cult and fandom have been increasingly growing, we would eventually see a handful of products produced. The two main ones that spring to mind are both related to Stan Winston, Steve Wang and Matt Rose’s interpretation of the Creature, and both of which were high-end and limited releases that a lot of folks may have missed. The first one I want to highlight is an official model kit of the Gillman designed by Steve Wang and sold by Kaiyodo in Japan around the mid 90s…

Amazingly badass, this kit would look great on my shelf if I had the budget for buying such things. the original model was not painted and is made of solid resin. The example above was assembled and painted by Tom Gilliland (Sideshow Collectible’s creative director) and Don Rutherford and can be yours if you have $500 burning a hole in your pocket…

The next item is another resin model, this time a full, to scale bead bust of the Gillman sculpted by Jeremy Bohr for Black Heart a few years ago…

Speaking of the Gillman, back in 1988-89 we almost got an unofficial Monster Squad Gillman toy as a part of the doomed Mattel MaxFx line of Barbie doll-sized action figures. You may have seen the MaxFx Freddy Kruger figure that was eventually released, but basically the concept of the line was to have a standard human doll on whcih you could preform your own special effects horror makeover. The line was planned to be much larger than the figure or two that were eventually released before it disappeared from toy shelves, and part of that proposed line was a Creature From the Black Lagoon style figure that used the Monster Squad Gillman as it’s inspiration…

So, a few years ago Sara and a bunch of her artist friends worked on a short-lived site for selling their daily warm up sketches and inks. I loved this series she did of Monster Squad portraits for that project…

Just recently she revisted that concept and expanded it to feature all of the monsters and the Squad as part of a Portrait-a-Day sketch card project that she collected into a very neat mini art book!

By far though, my absolute favorite piece of Monster Squad artwork that Sara has produced is this amazing illustration and screenprint of the MS clubhouse…

What’s even cooler than that? Well that a copy of this got into director Fred Dekker’s hands!

That’s pretty damn bad ass Sara!

And today’s card is…

Since there was never any MS merchandise produced, specifically a Topps trading card set, I thought it would be fun to make a mini set of 80s-style digital trading cards for my favorite movie of all time. So come back each evening for Trick or Treats and collect them all!

Earlier in the month I shared a series of Monster Squad articles and interviews that appeared in the pages of Fangoria and Starlog magazine back in 1987, and as an addendum to that post I wanted to share a couple more vintage magazine articles that debuted after the film had already been released in the US. As much as I love reading “lead-up” articles and interviews it next to impossible to avoid that pervasive sense of optimism and awe that comes with what basically amounts to PR and publicity (both from the perspective of the interviewer and interviewee. ” Of course <insert current film> is the best work I’ve <insert director> ever done.” “Of course I loved ever second working with the actors, studio, marketing department, etc, etc, etc…” It’s the nature of the game.

The best thoughts on a film come later, after it’s been digested by the audience and there is some distance to reflect and see how things fit into the bigger picture. Unfortunately it’s rare that we get to see articles written from this perspective that aren’t 20 or 30 years or more out from the events; we hardly ever get articles written a year or two later that reflect on the success or failure, and if we do it’s usually only a postscript to the artist’s newest work. That’s why this Starburst Magazine article from volume 10, issue 12 published in 1988 is fascinating. Though the article is written to support the ’88 release of the film in the UK and Europe, Dekker has already felt the brunt of the US box office failure and is living in that moment of clarity with some distance and lessons learned. It doesn’t hurt that the magazine is mainly a UK publication because that probably freed him up a bit to air some grievances…

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Starburst Review

I also included a review there at the end that was originally published in Starburst Magazine vol. 10, issue 10 that is way more favorable than the critical reviews in the US.

I thought I’d also take a moment to share the cover article from Scary Monsters Magazine, issue 2 which was still being printed as a zine back in 1992. There’s not a lot to the article except some straight forward clinical listing of plot and who the cast and crew are, but it’s still a fun bit of Monster Squad ephemera…

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The only other 80s era magazine that I am aware of that definitely had a Monster Squad article was issue 10 of Samhian (again, I think this was out of the UK), but I have yet to snag a copy for my collection. Are there any other articles from the 80s that you folks are aware of?

Now for today’s trading card…

Since there was never any MS merchandise produced, specifically a Topps trading card set, I thought it would be fun to make a mini set of 80s-style digital trading cards for my favorite movie of all time. So come back each evening for Trick or Treats and collect them all!